Dr.Mati: Thanks, I am fine and hope the same for you. Now, for this Winter Special Issue, which chilly medicine have you chose to talk about?

Dr. Singh: Oh! Well its PHOSPHORUS. I was going through your description of Phosphorus, I felt I was going through the diary of a child who never grew. Not because she was stubborn as Calcarea or stunted as Baryta but because she is a child at heart, quick, impulsive who could never learn to behave controlled as an Adult. Sort of " ID- Governed". You told that Phos has a weak sense of Identity. What does it mean and how does it cause her problem?

Dr.Mati: The main problem in Phosphorus is a deep sense of separation, or isolation at her very core. Perhaps there was a lack of bonding between mom and baby at birth? One of my Phosphorus friends was born too early and had to spend time in an incubator before she got to bond with her mom. Or, it could be that circumstances in her mom’s life made her pre-occupied with other things, so even though she nursed the baby and took care of her physically, she didn’t really give her the kind of energy or bonding that she needed. Whatever the reason was, Phosphorus was left with a sense that she was unloved or unwanted by the family.
I remember one case that illustrates this perfectly. It was a 3 year old girl who failed to thrive. She was losing weight, she was losing her hair by the handful and she had totally lost her "spark". The mother was a single mother of 3, struggling to survive by working, studying and trying to take care of her 3 kids all by herself. The little girl was number 3, and probably didn’t feel wanted since the mom didn’t have much energy left at the end of the day to pay much attention to her. (Phosporus solved the case beautifully!)

When it comes to identity, we often define ourselves in terms of how we relate to others. If others like us, we feel good. If others praise us, our sense of who we are becomes stronger. And the opposite is also true. Without that kind of attention, we get a weak sense of identity. Although Phosphorus feels like a princess, or like she is a person of nobility, she still isn’t really sure about it, so she needs a lot of conformation from others. And if the conformation doesn’t come from her parents, she will look for it elsewhere.

This is why Phosporus has become an expert at making friends. She compensates for the feeling of being unwanted by being overly friendly to others, and because she is charming and seems to have an inner "spark," it is very easy for her to make lots of new friends. This is one clue that makes it very easy to differentiate between Arsenicum and Phosphorus. They can both be demanding and have lots of fears, especially in the dark, but if you look at how many friends they have, you can easily see which one is the Phosphorus. Arsenicum feels like people don’t really like her very much, and she may only have a handful of friends that she can count on, while Phosphorus has lots and lots of friends, and the thought that people doesn’t like her, doesn’t even enter her mind.

Dr. Singh: Making so many friends, how do they cope. I mean Does Phos also has a multi faceted personality. Like she is timid shy, but then she is also jealous, proud and critical

Dr.Mati: To understand Phosphorus’ multi-faceted personality, we have to look at her core story to understand where she is coming from.

In the story, Phosphorus was a princess or a queen, or at least a person of very high rank. She must have had servants and a lot of power, and she must have been able to get whatever she wanted with the point of a finger. Unfortunately, it takes more than physical things to make someone happy. Love is also needed, but love can’t be forced or demanded. The people in Phosphorus’ life wisely kept a certain distance from her so they wouldn’t upset her, because if they did, who knows what she would do to them! So basically, Phosphorus feels unloved and isolated, even though she is in a more privileged position than anyone else. She stops appreciating anything that is given to her, and can easily become nasty if anyone says no to her.

Because friends are so important to her, she believes that beauty is her greatest asset, so beauty can easily become an obsession to her. She has to be the most beautiful person in her group, and if she isn’t, she can turn into the evil queen of Snowhite, so watch out!

Because of her sense of isolation and loneliness, and her desire for company at any cost, her relationships will suffer. Having friends means everything to her! Every remedy has developed a survival mechanism to be able to deal with the demands of the world, and making friends has become the survival mechanism for Phosphorus. Having friends is so important to her that she is willing to bend over backwards and do anything for her friends...at first...

However, this state never lasts very long. She acts as a doormat that people can wipe their feet on, but only until they get in the door! Then everything changes! Once they become her friends, she stops bending over backwards to get their attention. Now she DEMANDS attention! This is where Pulsatilla and Phosphorus are different. Pulsatilla is also affectionate and wants people to love her, but while Pulsatilla is hoping for affection to be given in return, Phosphorus is demanding it, or else, she will make you suffer!!! And she doesn’t just demand your love once in a while; she wants it all the time, every day! She wants constant proof that you love her, because deep inside, she feels so insecure that she doesn’t really know if anyone loves her. Therefore, she becomes totally addicted to having her love confirmed, all the time. (We often see this in the fairy tales, too, where the princess says to the knight " If you love me, you will do this for me..." She comes up with one task more impossible than the other, and the knight may even have to risk his life for her, just to prove his love! He would probably be better off running away while he still can, but unfortunately, he doesn’t know that, so by the time they actually get together, he may already hate her for all the things she put him through – which then in turn proves to her, her core delusion, that she isn’t really loved by anyone. And the patterns go on and on...)

Dr. Singh: Well! Thanks for your advice, I have never (yet) met an "Evil-witch sort of Phos" and now I hope I would never. But what is her Core Delusion, her central feeling which governs the whole of her persona?

Dr.Mati: So, the core delusion that goes with Phosphorus is that nobody really loves her, and this is a big problem for someone whose whole life has become an obsession about being loved. The story we are dealing with is the story about the evil queen of Snowhite. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all? Her friends are her "mirrors." She needs constant proof of their love for her, and this is why her relationships tend to become way too demanding for others. Her focus is solely on getting the love that she craves, and she doesn’t realize how much of a demand she is actually putting on others. She doesn’t know when to stop, or where other people’s boundaries are, or when enough is enough, since she doesn’t really have any boundaries herself. Because her sense of self is weak, she doesn’t really know where she starts and others begin. There is an overlap, and because of this overlap, she can easily pick up other people’s feelings. She is like a psychic sponge, affected by any outside influences, which is a common thing for anyone with weak boundaries, but her psychic ability can’t be totally trusted since it is often a mixture of impressions and imagination or wishful thinking as well. This happens because Phosphorus isn’t really clear about what is real and what is not. Again, it is a matter of unclear boundaries.

Dr. Singh: How is Phos in a relationship? You talked of "High maintenance Relationships" What are they?

Dr.Mati: So, if we look at Phosphorus in relationships, we can easily see both the positive and the negative aspects. On the positive side, Phosphorus is happy, charming, beautiful, popular and fun to be around, but this only happens when she is the most beautiful person in the group, and everybody gives her what she wants and constantly shows her how much they love her. The "high maintenance" aspect comes into the picture when she keeps wanting more and more proof of how much her friends love her. The more she demands, the more tired her friends become, and the more insecure Phosphorus will feel. When her friends eventually pull back or say no to her demands, she feels totally betrayed and unloved and she reacts by becoming absolutely furious. She becomes verbally abusive, and if she can sue you or turn you into the authorities in some way, she will. Her jealousy knows no boundaries, especially if the position is lost to someone who is prettier than she.

Dr. Singh: She will be the nicest person around until she does not face competition, but when someone more beautiful, talented is around she becomes jealous. What will she do? Does her syphilitic taint make her indifferent to others sufferings or will she bounce back and be fine?

Dr.Mati: Eventually, the people in her life and relationships will have to get away from her because her demands become a constant drain of energy. This is when the syphilitic taint really shows up! She will do anything she can to try to destroy the person who is trying to get away from her! (And when she is in this state, her remedy can sometimes be mistaken for Lachesis, since we don’t normally associate this kind of behavior with Phosphorus).

I saw an example of this recently when a Phosphorus girl got together with a beautiful black man. The relationship was very short lived, and the black man left her and moved into his own place. Phosphorus was so furious about this, that she called the police and told them that her ex-boyfriend had been abusive towards her, and she wanted him arrested. When nothing happened from her phone call, she beat herself up and went to the police station to show them how abused she was. When the police still wasn’t really responsive to her complaints, she got so furious that they put her in a cell, just to contain her. There, she kept beating herself up, not knowing that there was a camera in the cell, and they caught her on film! She was trying to set up her boyfriend so that he would be put in jail, even though he had done nothing to her at all! So, yes, Phosphorus can become indifferent to other people’s suffering, in fact, they WANT other people to suffer if they think they deserve to do so! If her black friend had been arrested for abusing an innocent white girl, he could have probably ended up in jail for a long time, even though he was the innocent one, but luckily, that didn’t happen in this case.

Dr. Singh: When her relationships break, what does she do?

Dr.Mati: After a relationship is over, and Phosphorus gets over her fit of vengeance, it doesn’t usually take too long before she gets over the whole episode and starts looking for another relationship instead. Her feelings, although they can be quite intense, don’t go very deep. On that level, Phosphorus can often be a bit superficial, which is another reason why she has a hard time creating intimate relationships. She doesn’t like anything that is too "heavy" or too deep. She really just wants to have fun. So if one relationship doesn’t work out, it usually doesn’t take very long before another relationship comes along. It is very strange, but Phosphorus always seems to have a steady stream of friends coming into her life, in spite of the way she treats people. Maybe it is because she is so pretty that her beauty has a tendency to blind the men to how she really is as a person.

Dr. Singh: She expects a lot from others and even she helps others as she wants her own security in return. What do you feel is the best way (other than medication) to deal with such self-centered Phosphoruses?

Dr.Mati: There isn’t really a lot you can do, because Phosphorus has to discover for her self how her demanding ways affect the people in her life. All the remedy profiles are here to learn certain lessons in this lifetime, and Phosphorus is here to learn to stop expecting love to come from everyone else all the time. It is as if she has lost her own connection to the ultimate source, and she has forgotten who she is. So she keeps expecting all the "mirrors" in her life to show her who she is, and she wants to see a desirable picture in the mirror, too, with no ugliness reflected! If the "mirror" reflects her ugliness, she will just break the mirror and get a new one, instead of realizing that the ugliness is not caused by the mirror – it actually exists in her... What she doesn’t understand is that a mirror is just a mirror. It is not the real thing. She has to go inside and find the loveable part within herself, and learn to love that part, because if she doesn’t love herself, no amount of outside confirmation can possibly convince her that she is loved.

Dr. Singh: What are the bright and dark sides of Phosphorus personality?

Dr.Mati: So, to summarize the bright and the dark sides of Phosphorus – the bright side is Phosphorus’ cheerful disposition. She is sympathetic, happy, fun, lively and entertaining, and she often does reach out to help others if she can. On the dark side, there is the jealous, angry, destructive, demanding aspects that people simply shun. So basically, Phosphorus is either very light, or very, very dark, depending on what is happening in her life, and because there is such a strong split between the light and the dark in her, it takes a lot of inner work and conscious will to change and transform before she can find a place of stability and balance within, and until that happens, watch out and be aware whenever you are dealing with a Phosphorus - and this applies to both personal as well as professional relationships!

Dr. Singh: Thanks Mati, for your beautiful explanation of Phosphorus, I hope our readers will love to know this side of his persona.